PS3 downloadable games up to 10x larger than XBL versions

Mark Raby, 28th November 2006

Culver City (CA) - With all three major consoles devoting resources to on-demand games directly from the box, Sony is aiming to be the winner in terms of potential size, with an "arbitrary limit" set at 500 MB.

In an interview with game enthusiast site Firing Squad, Sony development director John Hight said that downloadable game size could reach sizes much bigger than those currently offered by the Wii and Xbox 360, mostly due to the big internal hard drive on the PS3.

"We've arbitrarily set a limit of 500MB to keep download times reasonable. Since we've got plenty of HD space we can accommodate even bigger games and a lot of them," said Hight. The current cap on Xbox Live Arcade titles is 50 MB.

Unlike the XBL Arcade, which offers games like Pac-Man and Defender, and the Wii Virtual Console, with an emphasis on classic Nintendo games, Sony's service (the "e-Distribution Initiative") is to create new games to take advantage of the always-available online store, with an experience more like playing a Playstation game than a 1980s arcade title.